


this isn’t how i planned for our story to end

by dhils



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, hate sex??? what’s that???, miles wood is the second coming of jesus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 05:33:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16423358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dhils/pseuds/dhils
Summary: “I don’t care if you hate me.”“I don’t hate you,” Nolan says, as earnest as ever.





	this isn’t how i planned for our story to end

**Author's Note:**

> i WANTED to write hate sex but it just does not work with these two i swear to god

“I don’t hate you,” Nico says, and he bites his tongue while waiting for an answer, his heart thumping against his ribs. 

There’s a sigh, the beep of the dial tone, and Nico’s left with nothing. 

 

 

It’s like a slap to the face, that unfaltering realization that this is a grudge. 

He thinks it is at least, when there’s ice hissing under his skate, sweat beading at his brows, and he hits the boards with an unforgiving crack. Nico feels it from his head to toes, having barely enough time to catch a glimpse of Nolan, his eyes flaming and his lips curling around a cocky _fuck with me_. 

The crowd is deafening in his ear and all Nico sees is orange. There’s a roar behind him and he nearly loses his balance.

Taylor coasts to a stop next to him at the next whistle and bumps his shoulder. “You okay?” He asks, concern visible enough on his features to make Nico feel guilty. “You looked a little shaken up.”

“Right,” Nico says, his eyes searching the ice. “I’ll be fine.”

They land on an ever-familiar _PATRICK 19_ and it reads like glass shattering against a hardwood floor.

 

 

“You know, I don’t care if you hate me,” Nico says, when Nolan’s in his bedroom, pulling a shirt back on. The early morning sun beams into the room through frost-laden windows, warm and soothing. 

Nolan tosses him a look that replicates the light exactly, this little quirk in his lips. “I don’t hate you,” he says, as earnest as ever, and Nico blinks.

 

 

To be completely honest, Nico doesn’t understand Nolan for the life of him. That’s just how it‘s always been. Nolan’s the boy Nico just can’t read, the one that spits venom on the ice and puts on a mask around others.

Or maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe he know the Nolan Patrick that’s sweet and sincere off the ice, but puts on an act the second he’s in the black, white, and orange. 

Nico’s not sure if this is going to get any easier.

 

 

It’s not a competition, the first time they fuck. There aren’t scratching nails or sharp teeth. The one mark he comes away with is the bite on his inner thigh, when Nolan was between his legs, jacking him maddeningly slow. 

The first time they fuck, it’s more of a stress-reliever. Like, it’s not intimate, but it’s not frustrated either. It’s just Nico and Nolan, it’s two bodies pressed to each other like it’s the air they breathe. Nolan’s one long line of warmth against him, and if Nico cups his face while kissing him, it doesn’t matter after he comes. 

But maybe it does. Because that’s when Nolan playfully bites his shoulder and wraps them in the sheets, a mess of limbs, and sweat, and lips—where they’re still kissing, still laughing into each others’ mouths. 

The rest of the room fades away.

 

 

The beat of Nico’s heart is nearly identical to his laboured breaths, pumping along with the desperate heaves of his chest. He slumps onto the bench with a clatter, his lungs sucking in chilled arena air.

The gloved hand he presses to his jaw makes it sting and he thinks he would laugh if he had the energy to do it. 

“You look like shit,” Miles says from next to him, his face coiling into disgust, even if Nico’s seen much worse on him. He decides not to bring it up.

“Bad hit,” he huffs out between breaths. “Gotta learn how to take those.”

“The Flyers are dirty, it’s not your problem,” Miles says immediately, and his brows knit into a frown. “Which one was it? Want me to rip him to fucking shreds?” 

“Focus on your game, Wood,” Nico says mildly, but he still catches the determined look on Miles’ face as he scans the ice.

 

 

The scar on Nolan’s lip looks odd when he smiles, it’s dark and livid, but Nico still thinks, for some reason, he wants to get his mouth on it. And he does, cornering him in his room just to kiss the breath out of him.

Nolan licks his lips when they part, tongue flicking over the scar, and Nico swears he tastes copper.

“Does it hurt?” He asks. 

Nolan’s fingers trace the bruise on Nico’s jaw, kissing it directly afterward. “Shit happens. No big deal.”

 

 

Nico thinks Nolan might just live two separate lives, working only to rile others up out in the public, whereas he’ll love and care in private, behind closed doors and between silent kisses. 

Their hands brush, and Nico feels a moment of liquid courage pooling through him when he holds onto Nolan’s, their fingers intertwined while he shakes in pleasure underneath him. 

Nolan noses along his neck, leaving bites that feel like so much more than teeth on skin. They’re Nolan, warm and solid right against him, proof of this, a reminder that they’ve done it.

And Nico thinks, if he could, he’d be willing to tell the whole world. 

 

 

Nico’s head spins when he gets off the ice and reporters immediately jump on him, questioning him about the hit Nolan had laid on him. He doesn’t even process them as questions anymore, rather a jumble of words hitting his ears practically gracelessly.

Nico pulls his hat a little lower over his eyes and tries to give them answers about the so-called bad blood, the jealousy, the tarnished relationship between them when faced with a team rivalry. There’s not much he can say without flat-out calling bullshit on every word that gets flung at him, but he tries anyway.

“Thanks, guys,” he murmurs, when they turn away from him, and he catches a glimpse of Miles staring at him from the corner of his eye, nothing but a blur in his peripheral. 

“You and your goddamn innocence act,” he says, frowning. “You’re gonna have to realize someday that people are gonna start coming after you if you show this much vulnerability, man.”

“I’m not—what? Nolan and I are _friends_.” 

Miles laughs, but it’s bitter. It doesn’t leave his lips remotely genuinely. Nico feels stupidly nostalgic at that. “Sure thing, Hisch.”

 

 

Regardless of pretending it doesn’t affect him, Nico watches Nolan’s interviews with Miles’ words tucked somewhere in the back of his head.

“I’m not answering questions about the Devs,” Nolan says in the video, with the roll of his eyes. “They’re just another team, not a story for you to blow up.”

Nico thinks he’ll take that as a W.

 

 

Fucking—he realizes after a few times of doing it—isn’t the right word for them. Fucking sounds grating, like nails across a chalkboard, and what they do is slow, gentle, the way Nolan does things with a patience Nico has yet to find in anyone else, the way he takes care of him. 

It’s not _fucking_ , he thinks.

Nolan presses an open mouthed kiss to Nico’s pec, and Nico can hardly help the way he arches up into it, _searching, searching, searching._

It’s just—it’s so much more.

 

 

“I don’t hate you,” Nolan says, his hands on Nico’s hips. There’s something playing on the TV behind them, but Nolan’s lowered the volume to an incoherent buzz. Nico likes it like that, all of Nolan’s attention trained perfectly on him. “I never hated you.”

“I know,” Nico says, and he hides his face in the warm crook of Nolan’s neck. “We don’t have to. Hate each other, I mean.”

“We never did,” Nolan says, and his words sound like something Nico’s been waiting to hear forever, something that sends sparks of heat across his face. 

“I know,” he repeats, just as meaningfully. “But that’s how it works, right?”

Nolan looks like he’s about to say something. Thinks about it for a moment. “It doesn’t have to be.”

 

 

It’s the same old thing all over again. 

Nico and Nolan on the opposite ends of the circle, ready to draw, and Nolan doesn’t smile at him, doesn’t let his gaze falter from that stone cold look he’s mastered after all these years. 

But Nico thinks he might’ve caught a whispered, “Good luck,” under his breath, and spends enough time dwelling on it to lose the puck.

He doesn’t let it get to him, but there’s still something that dances inside his chest when Nolan scores later that period and catches his eyes while shouting an ecstatic, “Hell yeah!” 

Nico can’t even be mad, not when Nolan holds his gaze while getting tackled by teammates. 

 

 

“You’re so fucking pretty,” Nolan says.

Nico’s heart is thrumming in his ears, his back is to Nolan’s chest and he’s getting pinned into place by strong hands and sharp thrusts punching little gasps out of him.

Nolan scrapes his teeth over the skin he can reach, like he doesn’t think of anything but getting his mouth on Nico. And Nico tries not to be too loud, but he can’t help the way his skin blazes, the way it feels like so, so much.

It‘s good, being this close to Nolan, pressed right against him, and when they entwine their fingers, he doesn’t let go until he’s shouting through an orgasm.

It might be love, Nico thinks. It frightens him, just how blunt the thought comes through.

Nolan traces his fingers across Nico’s side afterwards, brushing overtop the stinging hockey bruises he’d been unrelentingly careful to keep from touching. 

“Fuck, you’re gorgeous,” Nolan says, his voice soft, and it stays between them. 

Maybe—maybe love is all it’s been this whole time.

 

 

There are certain things Nico has never allowed himself to say. Phrases he’s never uttered in his life and doesn’t think he’d dare say even if he‘d been offered up a fucking promotion. Nico won’t voice disdain towards other players, he won’t insult the media, he won’t talk back to his captain, and for the longest time, he thinks he’s never going say anything to Nolan. About his feelings, about the sex, about the kisses that leave him wanting so much more.

There’s nothing romantic in the way he says it, but a lot of things about them aren’t romantic. There’s still the faintest trace of a scar on Nolan’s lip, and Nico pops his bottom lip out of his mouth just to say it, tangled under bright white sheets.

“I love you,” he tells him. “Just so you know. I do.” 

Nolan blinks at him, something stirring behind his eyes. “Oh,” he breathes. “Fuck. Nico—yeah, I—wow.”

Nico wraps a hand around the side of his neck, running his thumb loosely along the blooming mark on his throat. “Yeah?”

“I do, too,” he says. “Love you—I love you, too.”

Nolan kisses Nico’s smile, and Nico wants to hold onto him forever.

 

 

Nolan grins at him from across the face off circle and Nico doesn’t even care who notices.


End file.
